I struggle to consider it scientific because it bakes in so many fundamental assumptions without questioning them. At least mainstream economics.
Comment on It's barely a science.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Economics is basically social psychology with some numbers sprinkled in.
smeg@infosec.pub 2 weeks ago
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
silasmariner@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Philosophy is in entirely the wrong place for some reason. Should be slightly to the right of maths.
kriz@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
For this reason it seems closer to religion for me
thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Don’t all scientific fields rest on fundamental assumptions? I mean, just to pull an example at random, astronomers were hung up on the geocentric model of the universe for a long time before we came up with the heliocentric model, which in turn was ditched for the “no true frame of reference” model we now use. Having flawed assumptions doesn’t make it non-scientific, just incorrect.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
What makes a difference is how models are evaluated in light of new evidence. If a model makes predictions that turn out to be incorrect, then a big part of scientific progress is in re-examining the underlying assumptions of the model.
My beef with economics isn’t that it’s often wrong, but that economists are often keen to present themselves as scientists to boost their epistemic authority, whilst also acting in a deeply unscientific way.
The worst economists for this get very offended if you say that economics is a soft science, with more in common with psychology than physics. This offends them because they hear “soft science” as a pejorative. Economics absolutely is a science, but the more that economists try to pretend that their object of study isn’t wibbly wobbly as hell, the less I respect them.
edible_funk@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
I’d consider economics a subgenre of sociology.
a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
If making unproven assumptions is problematic then physics is in some real deep shit.
thinkercharmercoderfarmer@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
I mean, yeah. We don’t have a unified theory of quantum gravity because at least one of our assumptions is off. Science is just figuring out precisely which assumptions are wrong and how wrong our they are.
Saint_La_Croix_Crosse@midwest.social 2 weeks ago
As someone that tries to be a bit of a generalist. Neoclassical economics is the one field of study where I have less respect for the field the more I learn about it and the problems that it tries to tackle.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
I keep calling it a pseudoscience.
Someone told me that I “don’t know what a pseudoscience is” and that I was “using the word wrong.”
No. No, I know what it is, and I used it precisely the way I meant it.
Wayyy too many people think classic economic theory is a legitimate field…
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
classic economic theory
To be fair, that’s like 150 years old, back when they believed in spontaneous generation, and the idea that continents move was absurd and crazy.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
And yet the global economy is still operating on the same basic assumptions…
They’ve been made even worse by further developments of those basic assumptions as expounded by neoliberalism and reaganomics, but the underlying premises are still the same.
Bleys@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The global economy is definitely not being run by economists or anything particularly close to prescribed economic principles. Most countries are being run by some combination of authoritarian and/or populist governments whose economic policy is crafted to benefit either a small ruling class, or to win elections (voted on largely by people who don’t understand economics).
The most obvious example of this is the United States, which is the single largest national economy, and which keeps instituting tariffs despite “tariffs = almost always bad” being one of the first and most foundational tenets of macro econ.
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Yep somehow the indoctrination system hasn’t improved in the past 200 years. It’s not just economics either.
kernelle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
It’s definitely just Maths with feelings sprinkled on top.
If you read a book by any investor they’ll talk about the irrationality of the market. They’ll say how daytrading should be mathematically impossible, but admit how some people do profit a lot from it.
I wouldn’t call it pseudoscience, because it’s like mixing maths with psychology.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
It’s a soft science at best, but some people try to treat it like it’s a hard science.
I still hold that it displays characteristics of pseudoscience by operating on unsound premises and unverifiable assumptions though
technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
Fake numbers with fake relationships.
jimmy90@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
true! maybe with some biology, anthropology, network effects, game theory churned in
fossilesque@mander.xyz 2 weeks ago
Don’t forget gambling.
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
… And wishful thinking!
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
So… religion
Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
No joke: Economists do kind of fulfill the role of priests in that they explain the “necessary [fake] world order” to the masses.
Saying “Capitalism is a bad system” gets you comparable comments from economists as “Gods don’t exist” gets you from priests in a religious society (if not worse).
ViatorOmnium@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
They don’t even disguise it, praxeology is effectively theology without the metaphysics.